“This is very nice of you to come so soon, Mr. Hobhouse,” she said. “I am glad I hadn’t gone further before you appeared.”
“Oh, but don’t let me stop you, Miss Rendall,” said Mr. Hobhouse anxiously. “Really, I can’t allow it; no, no, really not. You mustn’t turn back, indeed you mustn’t! Perhaps I shall find Mr. Rendall at home.”
“I was only going for a walk to nowhere in particular.” She looked at him with an irresistible mixture of coyness and frankness and suggested, “Would you care to come for a little walk too? It’s far too early for tea.”
What could the poor gentleman do? He gushed over the suggestion of course, and accepted it.
“I was going to walk down to the shore,” she said. “Will that suit you?”
Mr. Hobhouse assured her that anywhere would suit him; he had no choice at all: anywhere, everywhere, nowhere would be all the same to him.
As they walked side by side down towards the sea, he was suddenly struck with the sense of being in a familiar situation, of a repetition of something that had happened before. And then he realised that this was actually the walk that the same girl and a young man Merton had taken on a memorable August night. He noted through his glasses the very wall behind which he had lit his pipe when the flare of his match revealed the butt end of a pistol, and presently they were following the same winding way above the beach.
This did not serve to make the playing of his part any the easier. It filled him in fact with a continual fear of giving himself away by doing something he had done before. It was really a most irrational fear; but there it was. Under the circumstances his sustained babble and blink were distinctly creditable.
But what gave him a more excusable cause for apprehension was Miss Rendall’s own attitude. That there was something on her mind, something behind her words, he felt morally certain. She spoke in the most natural way and on the most commonplace topics, but there were frequent silences and it was during those he felt that without looking directly at him, she was watching him. And once or twice he got it into his head that she was a little puzzled and uncertain, though whether it was about what to think or what to do, he had no conception. He told himself that all this was only his own morbid imagination. Still, it made that walk an uncomfortable ordeal and seldom did actor have to work harder to keep his end up.
Luckily however the man had the virtue of impudence and not only did he manage to entertain the lady with a garrulous account of his antiquarian researches (reasoning acutely that women are seldom experts in such matters), but he even ventured to broach a delicate subject for his own ends.
“The gentleman who—er—resided with Dr. Rendall last summer was not, I believe, very interested in antiquities,” he observed. “Did you know him, Miss Rendall? Mr. O’Brien was his name, I believe.”
“Yes,” she said, “I knew Mr. O’Brien.”
There was certainly no trace of any feeling, whether of like or dislike, in her voice.
“Not a very pleasant fellow, I believe,” Mr. Hobhouse went on. “At least I should judge not; I should gather not. But I trust he wasn’t a friend of yours, Miss Rendall?”
“Not a particular friend. But why do you think he was unpleasant?”
“Oh, only from Dr. Rendall’s references to him—only from that, I assure you,” said Mr. Hobhouse with propitiating eagerness.
“Really?” said she, her eyes opening.
There was no doubt that this information genuinely surprised her.
“I thought they seemed great friends,” she added.
“Oh, they may have been—they may have been. I may be doing Mr. O’Brien an injustice. Possibly I misunderstood your relative—quite possibly.”
She was silent for a little while after this, and Mr. Hobhouse too ceased chatting. He was eyeing the shore line very curiously and trying to piece together his recollections of it.
“I think perhaps we have gone far enough now,” said she, and for a minute or two they stood still; and a very distinct sense of being in a familiar situation was borne in upon her companion.
And then all at once she exclaimed,
“Do you hear anything?”
I started and stared at her. For the moment I had ceased to be Mr. Hobhouse, so straight had I been carried back to that night six months ago. Those were her very words, and if I were not much mistaken this was the very place. I nearly answered as I had answered before, but was just able to check myself. And then she broke the spell by laughing.
“It’s only the sea! But it sounded so funny and hollow.”
There was indeed a low gurgle just audible, as if the waves were breaking into some cave. It struck me that she must have singularly sharp ears to have noticed it. We stood there for a minute or two longer, and then she asked,
“Do you see any ancient remains, Mr. Hobhouse?”
It was not in fact ancient remains that the eye glasses were looking at, but I jumped at the chance of making sure of my bearings, and with an appearance of great eagerness told her that there seemed to be something decidedly interesting in the appearance of the rocks at that place.
“I can wait for a moment if you’d like to look at them nearer,” she said.
“This is luck!” I said to myself as I scrambled down. “I believe I’ve found the actual place.”
A few minutes exploration left no doubt in my mind. I found the very cliff face under which I had been decoyed and was able to clear up one point. A man above could easily have struck at me with some implement, say, six feet long. I shut my eyes and pictured that curved mystery, and then in a flash I had it: a scythe blade tied to a pole!
